She says I needn't do it, but I guess it's worth the risk--a human life!" A downtown express roared into the station.
"What time is it ?" Jimmie Dale asked the guard, as he stepped aboard.
"'Bout midnight," the man answered tersely.
The forward car was almost empty, and Jimmie Dale chose a seat by himself.

How did she know?
How did she know not only this, but the hundred other affairs that she had outlined in those letters of hers?
By what means, superhuman, indeed, it seemed, did she--Jimmie Dale jerked himself erect suddenly.

What good did it do to speculate on that now, when every minute was priceless?
What was HE to do, how was he to act, what plan could he formulate and carry out, and WIN against odds that, at the outset, were desperate enough even to forecast almost certain failure--and death! Who would ever have suspected old Tom Ludgate, known for years throughout the squalour of the East Side as old Luddy, the pushcart man, of having a bag of unset diamonds under his pillow--or under the sack, rather, that he probably used for a pillow! What a queer thing to do! But then, old Luddy was a character--apparently always in the most poverty-stricken condition, apparently hardly more than keeping body and soul together, trusting no one, and obsessed by the dread that by depositing in a bank some one would discover that he had money, and attempt to force it from him, he had put his savings, year after year, for twenty years, twenty-five years, perhaps, into unset stone--diamonds.

How had she found that out?
Jimmie Dale sank into a deeper reverie.

He could steal them all right, and they would be well worth the stealing--old Luddy had done well, and lived and existed on next to nothing--the stones, she said, were worth about fifteen thousand dollars.